Leroy Chiao Quotes

I would still like to go up in the space shuttle. It's appalling that the accident happened, but it was an accident and obviously if I knew there was any risk, I'd be foolish to do it. I'd love to stand outside the Earth and look at it. Extraordinary feeling that, something that we've been tied to for millions of years, and a handful of people have looked at it, to be able to do that would be stunning.

I was only a hero by default. The flights were few and far between. There weren't that many astronauts. The moon flights were so interesting and exciting.

In 2009 I went up on the space shuttle. I was in space for 16 days and docked at the space station for 11 days. The entire crew did five space walks, of which I was involved with three of them. When you're doing a space walk, you always have a buddy with you. It's a very dangerous environment when you're doing a space walk.

When you see the orbiter headed out the launch pad and then crawling up the hill and being hard down on the pad, it does something to you.

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

When you launch in a rocket, you're not really flying that rocket. You're just sort of hanging on.

I'd love to go back to space, I don't know any astronaut who doesn't want to.

When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.

It was hard for me to believe. I would look down and say, 'This is the moon, this is the moon,' and I would look up and say, 'That's the Earth, that's the Earth,' in my head. So, it was science fiction to us even as we were doing it.

I'm just tickled pink that I'll be on Endeavour's last flight.

The thing I like most about flying in space is not the view. The thing I like about it is doing something I feel very, very strongly about.

I can't imagine anywhere I'd rather be than outside the space shuttle in my space suit next to the Hubble Space Telescope.

They say that in space, nobody can hear you scream. The first time I stepped out of the airlock, I was ready to scream - not because I was scared but because I was so excited to see the Earth below me.

My first mission was six and a half months. We weren't exactly sure how long it was going to be because I went up and back on the space shuttle, which was dependent on weather for launch and landing.

Being an astronaut, there are not a lot of things that have really shocked me in my life.

I was the 128th human in space. So I didn't really sweat about it.

That was in 1994, July, 1994, and I can remember that like it was yesterday too because it was the culmination of a childhood dream to finally be laying on the launch pad inside a space shuttle and getting ready to be launched into space. The impression of going into a space shuttle is that it looks like a brand new simulator. We spend so many hours inside a simulator that everything is very familiar. Every switch, the seats, the way things work, but the vehicle, the actual spacecraft looks brand new because it hasn't been used nearly as much as the simulators.

I remember when I was a kid my first real confrontation with space travel was when the Challenger exploded and I remember how traumatic that was for me, because I remember watching that on the news and all the children in our class were watching.

I guess those of us who have been with NASA kind of understand the tremendous excitement and thrills and celebrations and national pride that went with the Apollo program is just something you're not going to create again, probably until we go to Mars.

The g-forces increased and I wasn't able to continue to hold the camera against the window, so I had to lay it back against my chest, but still continued to photograph the re-entry until there was no more unusual visual effects of the energy in the atmosphere. And it was very comforting to understand that the people in Houston, the controllers, had very high confidence that we were on the right path.

In the press grandstand where I watched Discovery rise against the cloudless sky, the media hit the abort button on cynicism. The Earth shook to the sounds of man, three miles away. The candle lit. . . only someone stripped of awe can leave a launch untouched.

Everyone who's been in space would, I'm sure, welcome the opportunity for a return to the exhilarating experiences there. For me, a flight in a shuttle, though most satisfying, would be anticlimactic after my flight to the moon. Plus, if I pursued a flight myself, people would think that was the reason I am trying to generate interest in public spaceflight. And that's not the purpose - I want to generate interest in long-range space exploration.

When I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon I cried

Oh, my. I'd forgotten how much I hate space travel.

In real life, people in the most dire situations must cope through humor.